TWO NAPATAN GRAVES AT SHIBA AL-ARAB NEAR JEBEL BARKAL (SUDAN)

ARKAMANI Sudan Electronic Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology

AUGUST 2002

The discovery of Shiba al-Arab Napatan graves in May 1988 brings some useful information to one of the Berlin Meroitic Conference. Although these graves have been described in a short report Leclant and Clerc1989, and commented with colour plates Elnur and Basha, I want to summarize its data, hoping to bring more wheat to T,Kendall’s mill, making the information available.

Among probable tens of rock-cut tombs at Shiba al-Arab, near Jebel Barkal, the Antiquities and National Museum’s Service excavated, partly, two graves denominated ARA I, and ARA 2.

ARA I, counts at least seven chambers, arranged in two groups opening into a vertical descending pit by independent entrances. Rooms are sub-rectangular, of few square meters each, of few square meters each, 1.2 m high. They are communicating through doors, all open but one which was sealed with a brick wall. The recent plundering of a first group of five intact chambers, burying four extended skeletons, led to the discovery, but deprived us of the most of the adornment objects probably buried with the bodies: apart from an insignificant ceramic vessel, we rely only upon fragments of a probable wooden bier to date them. The plundering of the other group of two chambers is ancient: this second part of the tomb, after having been left open for long, might have been reused at Meroitic times according to potteries we photographed from afar. We did not excavate, hence, we cannot be sure.

Both groups of chambers have received paintings in two colours, partly figurative. All doors are “decorated” with a false casing or frame. In the first group of five rooms, the figurative scenes, symmetrically painted on both sides of a door, consist of two boats, where two human beings are depicted one rowing, the second sitting on a chair under a canopy. In the second group of two rooms, a frieze is developed on both sides of a door: two human beings holding various objects, one leading an ostrich, and four cows or any other ruminants.

ARA 2, is much simpler grave, unpainted, arranged in two rooms only. A stairway gives way to a large antechamber, sub-rectangular, of height varying from 1.2 m near the entrance to 0.8 m on the other side, destined to bury tens of ceramic vessels and few others of stone and bronze, of which only fragments were recovered. The ceramic vessels date the grave to the Napatan period. The small elongated second room, with a low roof, destined to shelter the body, was once closed with a weighing slab, found afar from its original position. Both rooms were plundered and ransacked in ancient times. The tomb, left open for long, was reused for sheltering two new burials which we found intact: three beads and one decorated jar surely date these burials to Meroitic times.

The wooden sample yielded the 14c datation GIF-7893, which indicates the date 2730± 60 B.P., calibrated (811,- 1017). Whether it dates the reoccupation of an ancient collective tomb of the New Kingdom, or original Early Napatan burials, remains debatable: we have yet no serious clue, apart from the shape of ARA I, to check if an “Egyptian” grave was totally cleaned in order to receive new bodies at Napatan times. Such checking could only come from further excavations with more graves at Shiba al-Arab. Nevertheless we may bet that the Napata aristocratic graves should not be far from the royal ones: they are still missing around the capital, and could in no way be limited to cemeteries at Napata and Meroe. Many jebels around the Barkal are reputed to shelter cemeteries: it is high time to exploit them, since no one knows how the irrigation schemes of the IV Cataract Dam project will affect them in a near future.

ARA I paintings provide another chief aim for further excavations at least at Shiba al-Arab, since the only paintings of funerary art are found in the area are limited to graves K 5 and K 7 at al-Kurru and Nu 53 at Nuri. Their style founds their utmost importance. Although some of their subjects obviously relate the representations to the funerary repertoire anyone would name Egyptian (barks, man leading an ostrich, milking or sacrificed cows, etc.), it is as well evident that the sponsor of ARA I had no Egyptian painter at his disposal, or no painter trained into Egyptian conventions. Did royal workshops exist at the time? And if they did, why had this sponsor no access to them? We may well define a Nubian painter, drawing from Nubian cultural models, as opposed to the “Egyptian” painters at al-Kurru and Nuri, even if all of them may be said “Egyptianizing”. And this statement may be defined whatever the final dating of the tomb, be it of Egyptian, pre-Napatan, or Napatan period.

The only repertoire to which one can compare these figures is that of rock-engravings abundant in the region, especially upstream the IVth Cataract, and which are datable to many epochs from Prehistory to Christian or even Muslim periods. Boats, cows, and ostriches are subjects we encounter among many others figuring animals and human beings. We ignore so far the meaning of such figurative programmes abundant among the numerous rocky outcrops of the region. If other graves were to yield more of such paintings, Shiba al-Arab cemetery might be a key document to understand and interpret a traditional African art, since it provides the opportunity of using the well-known Egyptian symbolism to decipher the puzzling Nubian one.

P.S. As I was not able to continue the work in this site for reasons beyond my control, Ahmed Hakim, who took over the post of Diretor General of Antiquities and National Museums proposed to Irene Liverani to continue the work. She wrote to me and I was happy that she accepted the offer. I wrote to her a very brief note about the work I carried with Patrice Lenoble, (Click to see correspondence).

Translated into Arabic by Osama Elnur

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